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Meeting summary 070822
Carla and Graham on behalf of Miss Zibu Mntambo: Hello fellow Toastmasters, Guests and Visitors The theme of last nights meeting was “Comedic Flair” in mind of the Humorous Speech Contests doing the rounds at Toastmaster clubs in August and September. It was also a night of a Comedy of Errors that kept the meeting entertaining and members, guests and visitors in tears. Ceri James offered the Toast for the evening and the Toastmaster for the evening, Erich Viedge, showed why he is a District Governor as he promptly honed the meeting into its ‘funny bone’ state. Our Grammarian, Flicka Steenberg, introduced the word of the day, “capacity”, and managed to miss or forget the three usages of the word ! She forgave us for ragging her and gave a very good account of good use of the English language where it occurred. She tallied our ums, ers, and other verbal viruses and made us realise that we need to take extra care when speaking. Graham would like us to return to the state of naming the ‘defaulters’ – how else do they know they were involved? The speeches touched on a range of ‘cringe” topics because, as Erich put it, “they made him realise how much he is putting off through procrastination”. (Don’t worry Erich… you are not alone ;-). The first speech was by Isobel Joubert on the topic of ‘Change’. She completed her CC2 and informed us of how to go about reaching our “pie in the sky” dreams and making them tangible goals. Andrew Timberlake completed his CC3 with the topic “Doing makes for success”. He informed us why we procrastinate and how to stop the vicious cycle and boot our procrastinate gene out the door. (Graham says he used to procrastinate, but now he can’t be bothered). Richard Riche completed his CC5 with ‘Don't don't but do do’. Richard got into the swing of things and told us how not to go about achieving goals and in that way we can achieve our goals. Confused… let me explain. If you say: - “Don’t think of a purple elephant” you think of a purple elephant and - “Think of a purple elephant” you think of a purple elephant. So think about what you want to happen and not what you don’t want to happen! So for instance if I say… I don’t want Brad Pitt to come to my house…. Well I must be careful because that may just happen ;-). Watch this space ;-). Graham Nicholls started off his first Advanced Communicator Bronze speech entitled “Retirement” from the Speaking to Inform manual. I have to commend him for doing the unthinkable! He made his topic, informing the club on retirement, funny... He brought his natural flavour to his speech and we benefited. We now know that we should be paying more into our mortgage bonds as soon as possible. The reason is we save thousands of Rand in interest charges that we can put to better use like: - investment in more property or - other non-wasting asset investments. Well done to all of the speakers both on content and delivery. We look forward to your future speeches. Our evaluators were lead by the brilliant Barbara Poultney from Golden Gavel. Thank you for helping out at such short notice! She brought together the Evaluation team, made up of: · Matthew Hindley - congrats for being a first timer in the evaluation section and doing well. Reggie Muzariri and Maciek Szymanski. - thanks for being our guests and providing insights from your clubs. Another first “timer” was Coralie Rutherford, timing the speeches and the evaluations. She lost her timing a bit with Grahams enthralling speech but it all worked out well in the end and Graham will be out of ICU any time now... Table topics was replaced by a comedian, the Italian Stallion going by the name of Vittorio Leonardi. He provided the club members in attendance with input on what makes a person funny and had us in stitches while doing this. We have decided he is so good that he has to join us for the H1 Humorous Contest as a judge! Thank you Vittorio! The evening concluded with an award ceremony where a certain president (I’m not naming names) didn’t realise that she had been given the winners of the night and proceeded to ask Erich who they were. Prizes for best speaker and best evaluator went to Richard Riche and Reggie Muzariri respectively. A big thank you to our visitors for being present! Many of the visitors have been to our meeting before* but there are a few new faces that we welcome with open arms ;-). See below so you aren’t kept in the dark: Alan Powell* Allen Subramoney * Christa Roux* Danie Roux* Garth Barnes Karen Bethley Rudolph Nkatansi Vittorio Leonardi Christa Roux won the raffle and rumour is doing the rounds that the Roux team will join soon! Alan has also expressed an interest! Erich handed the meeting back to me and the meeting was adjourned even though I dropped/threw/misplaced the gavel at first! Perhaps it’s because I was trying so hard NOT to think of Brad Pitt. The next meeting will be held on Monday, the 3rd September 2007. Looking forward to seeing you all again. Carla Sargo CL President 4th dimension toastmasters cell: +2783 457 4571 email: carla@consology.com